
Class J9t 

Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



fft 






Copyright, igio 
By Thomas Y. Crovvell & Co. 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



©CU2683 



JANUARY 



JANUARY FIRST 

' I S HE world's great age begins anew, 

-*■ The golden years return, 
The earth doth like a snake renew 
Her winter weeds outworn. 

JANUARY SECOND 

When the power of imparting joy- 
Is equal to the will, the human soul 
Requires no other heaven. 



Hellas. 



<$ueen Mab. 



JANUARY THIRD 

Man who man would be, 
Must rule the empire of himself; in it 
Must be supreme, establishing his throne 
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy 
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. 

JANUARY FOURTH 

'Twere sweet 
'Mid stars and lightnings to abide, 
And winds and lulling snows, that beat 

[ i ] 






Sonnet. 



With their soft flakes the mountain wide, 

When weary meteor lamps repose, 

And languid storms their pinions close: 

And all things strong and bright and pure, 

And ever during, aye endure : 

Who knows, if one were buried there, 

But these things might our spirits make, 

Amid the all-surrounding air, 

Their own eternity partake ? 

Rosalind and Helen. 

JANUARY FIFTH 

I know 
That Love makes all things equal : I have heard 
By mine own heart this joyous truth averred : 
The spirit of the worm beneath the sod 
In love and worship, blends itself with God. 

Epipsychidion. 

JANUARY SIXTH 

O, for Medea's wondrous alchymy, 

Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam 

With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs 

exhale 

From vernal blooms fresh fragrance ! 

Alastor. 

JANUARY SEVENTH 

Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course, 
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 
The gradual paths of an aspiring change : 
[ 2] 



For birth, and life, and death, and that strange 

state 
Before the naked soul has found its home, 
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 
The restless wheels of being on their way, 
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, 
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal. 

Queen Mab. 

JANUARY EIGHTH 

The beauty of delight makes lovers glad, 
Gazing on one another. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

JANUARY NINTH 

I touch thy temples pale, 
I breathe my soul on thee ! 
And, could my prayers avail, 

All my joy should be 
Dead, and I would live to weep, 
So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep. 

Hellas. 

JANUARY TENTH 

Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds 
Of high resolve, on fancy's boldest wing 
To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn 
The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste 
The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. 

Queen Mab. 

[3] 



JANUARY ELEVENTH 

True love in this differs from gold and clay, 

That to divide is not to take away. 

Love is like understanding, that grows bright 

Gazing on many truths; 't is like thy light, 

Imagination ! which, from earth and sky, 

And from the depths of human fantasy, 

As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills 

The Universe with glorious beams. 

Epipsychidion. 

JANUARY TWELFTH 

Every sight 
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air, 
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses, 
and all of great, 
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past 
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt 
And knew. 



JANUARY THIRTEENTH 
Learn to make others happy. 



Alastor. 



Queen Mab. 



JANUARY FOURTEENTH 

The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep 
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep 
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll 
on ! 

[4] 



The tempest is his steed, he strides the air 
And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, 
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I 
have none. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

JANUARY FIFTEENTH 

Life may change, but it may fly not: 
Hope may vanish, but can die not; 
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; 
Love repulsed, — but it returneth. 

Hellas. 

JANUARY SIXTEENTH 

Some say that gleams of a remoter world 
Visit the soul in sleep — that death is slumber — 
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber 
Of those who wake and live. 

Mont Blanc. 

JANUARY SEVENTEENTH 

Art and eloquence, 
And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain 
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. 
It is a woe too "deep for tears," when all 
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, 
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 
Those who remain behind, nor sobs nor groans, 
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope : 

[5] 



But pale despair and cold tranquillity, 
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, 
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 

Alastor, 



JANUARY EIGHTEENTH 

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, 

Star-inwrought ! 

Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, 

Kiss her until she be wearied out, 

Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, 

Touching all with thine opiate wand — 

Come, long sought! 

To Night. 



JANUARY NINETEENTH 

Language is a perpetual orphic song, 

Which rules with Daedal harmony a throng 

Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and 

shapeless were. 

Prometheus Unbound. 



JANUARY TWENTIETH 

Every heart contains perfection's germ. 

Queen Mab. 



[6] 



JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST 

O human Spirit ! spur thee to the goal 

Where virtue fixes universal peace, 

And midst the ebb and flow of human things 

o 

Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, 
A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary waves. 

Queen Mab. 

JANUARY TWENTY-SECOND 

If you divide pleasure and love and thought, 
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not 
How much, while any yet remains unshared, 
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow shared. 

Epipsychidion. 

JANUARY TWENTY-THIRD 

The universe, 
In nature's silent eloquence, declares 
That all fulfil the works of love and joy. 

Queen Mab. 

JANUARY TWENTY-FOURTH 
In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers, 
When the dim nights were moonless, have I known 
Joys which no tongue can tell ; my pale lip quivers 
When thought revisits them. 

Revolt of Islam. 

[7] 



JANUARY TWENTY-FIFTH 

All sufficing Nature can chastise 

Those who transgress her law, — she only knows 

How justly to proportion to the fault 

The punishment it merits. 

Queen Mab. 

JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH 

The blasts of autumn drive the winged seeds 
Over the earth, — next come the snows, and rain, 
And frosts, and storms, which dreary winter leads 
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train. 

Revolt of Islam. 

JANUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

Chameleons feed on light and air; 

Poets' food is love and fame. 

If in this wide world of care 

Poets could but find the same 

With as little toil as they, 

Would they ever change their hue 

As the light chameleons do, 

Suiting it to every ray 

Twenty times a day ? 

An Exhortation. 

JANUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

All love is sweet, 
Given or returned. Common as light is love, 
And its familiar voice wearies not ever. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

[8] 



JANUARY TWENTY-NINTH 

Familiar acts are beautiful through love. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

JANUARY THIRTIETH 

The wilderness has a mysterious tongue 
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, 
So solemn, so serene, that man may be 
But for such faith with nature reconciled. 

Mont Blanc. 

JANUARY THIRTY-FIRST 

Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, 



They alone can give the bliss 
Worthy a soul that claims 
Its kindred with eternity. 



Queen Mab. 



9] 



II *!*■ 



FEBRUARY 



FEBRUARY FIRST 

O THERE are spirits in the air, 
And genii of the evening breeze, 
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair 
As star-beams among twilight trees : 

With mountain winds, and babbling springs, 
And moonlight seas, that are the voice 
Of these inexplicable things 
Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice 
When they did answer thee. 

Early Poems. 



FEBRUARY SECOND 

Throughout this varied and eternal world 
Soul is the only element, the block 
That for uncounted ages has remained. 
The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight 
Is active, living spirit. 

Queen Mab. 



[ ii] 



FEBRUARY THIRD 

The cloud shadows of midnight possess their 

own repose, 
For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is 

in the deep : 
Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean 

knows : 
Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its 

appointed sleep. 

Stanzas. 

FEBRUARY FOURTH 

I love all waste 
And solitary places; where we taste 
The pleasure of believing what we see 
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be. 

Julian and Maddalo. 

FEBRUARY FIFTH 

To the pure all things are pure. 

Revolt of Islam. 

FEBRUARY SIXTH 

O man ! hold thee on in courage of soul 
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, 
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll 
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day. 

Death. 

[ "I 



FEBRUARY SEVENTH 

The torpor of the year when feeble dreams 
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep 
Holds every future leaf and flower. 

Mont Blanc. 

FEBRUARY EIGHTH 

Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 
Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. 

To a Skylark. 

FEBRUARY NINTH 

Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, 
Whose nature is its own divine control, 
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea. 



All things confess his strength, through the cold 

mass 
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

FEBRUARY TENTH 

And what art thou ? I know, but dare not speak : 
Time may interpret to his silent years. 
Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek, 
And in the light thine ample forehead wears, 

[ 13] 



And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears, 
And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy 
Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears : 
And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see 
A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. 

Ded. to Revolt of Islam. 

FEBRUARY ELEVENTH 

The pale stars are gone ! 
For the sun, their swift shepherd, 
To the folds them compelling, 
In the depths of the dawn, 
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee 
Beyond his blue dwelling, 
As fawns flee the leopard. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

FEBRUARY TWELFTH 

Our simple life wants little, and true taste 
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste 
The scene it would adorn. 

Epipsychidion. 

FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH 

What is that awful sound ? 
'T is the deep music of the rolling world 
Kindling within the strings of the waved air, 
iEolian modulations. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

[ Hi 



FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH 

And odours in a kind of aviary 

Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, 

Clipt in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy 

Had woven from dew-beams while the moon 

yet slept; 
As bats at the wired window of a dairy, 
They beat their vans; and each was an adept, 
When loosed and missioned, making wings of 

winds, 
To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds. 

Witch of Atlas. 



FEBRUARY FIFTEENTH 

Our feet now, every palm, 

Are sandalled with calm, 
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm; 

And, beyond our eyes, 

The human love lies 
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise. 

Prometheus Unbound. 



FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH 

All-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps 
The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds 
Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul 
Fears to attempt the conquest. 

Queen Mab. 

[ is] 



FEBRUARY SEVENTEENTH 

Yet pause, and plunge 
Into Eternity, where recorded time, 
Even all that we imagine, age on age, 
Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind 
Flags wearily in its unending flight, 
Till it sink dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

FEBRUARY EIGHTEENTH 

Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth 
Are children of one mother, even Love. 

Revolt of Islam. 

FEBRUARY NINETEENTH 

The splendours of the firmament of time 
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; 
Like stars to their appointed height they climb, 
And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
The brightness it may veil. 

Adonais. 

FEBRUARY TWENTIETH 

Even thy name is as a god, 
Heaven ! for thou art the abode 
Of that power which is the glass 
Wherein man his nature sees. 
Generations as they pass 
[ 16] 



Worship thee with bended knees. 
Their unremaining gods and they 
Like a river roll away: 
Thou remainest such alway. 



Ode to Heaven. 



FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIRST 

He came like a dream in the dawn of life, 
He fled like a shadow before its noon; 
He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife, 
And I wander and wane like the weary moon. 

O sweet Echo wake, 

And for my sake 
Make answer the while my heart shall break ! 

Fragments. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-SECOND 

How wonderful that even 
The passions, prejudices, interests, 
That sway the meanest being, the weak touch 

That moves the finest nerve, 

And in one human brain 
Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link 

In the great chain of nature. 

Queen Mab. 



[17] 



FEBRUARY TWENTY-THIRD 

Were it virtue's only meed, to dwell 
In a celestial palace, all resigned 
To pleasurable impulses, immured 
Within the prison of itself, the will 
Of changeless nature would be unfulfilled. 

Queen Mab. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FOURTH 

Woe is me ! 
The winged words on which my soul would 

pierce 
Into the height of Love's rare Universe, 
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire. 

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! 

Epipsychidion. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIFTH 

But now, oh weave the mystic measure 

Of music, and dance, and shapes of light, 

Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and 

pleasure 
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH 

Love's very pain is sweet, 
But its reward is in the world divine, 
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave. 

Epipsychidion. 

I 18] 



FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

And some had lyres whose strings were 

intertwined 
With pale and clinging flames, which ever there 
Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the 

crystal air. 

Revolt of Islam. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart 
And come, for some uncertain moments lent. 
Man were immortal, and omnipotent, 
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within 
his heart. 
Thou messenger of sympathies 
That wax and wane in lover's eyes; 
Thou, that to human thought art nourishment, 
Like darkness to a dying flame ! 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-NINTH 

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; 
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, 
Streaking the darkness radiantly ! yet soon 
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever. 

Mutability. 

[ 19] 



MARCH 



MARCH FIRST 

T^ROM all the blasts of Heaven thou hast 
■*■ descended : 

Yes, like a spirit, like a thought which makes 
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes, 
And beatings haunt the desolated heart, 
Which should have learnt repose; thou hast 

descended 
Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring! 
A child of many winds ! As suddenly 
Thou comest as the memory of a dream, 
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

MARCH SECOND 

Would I were the winged cloud 
Of a tempest swift and loud ! 
I would scorn 
The smile of morn, 
And the wave where the moonrise is born ! 

Bask in the blue noon divine 

Who would ? Not I. 

Hellas. 
[21] 



MARCH THIRD 

For, lo ! the wintry clouds are all gone by, 
And bright Arcturus through yon pines is 

glowing, 
And far o'er southern waves, immovably 
Belted Orion hangs — warm light is flowing 
From the young moon into the sunset's chasm. 

Prince Athanase. 

MARCH FOURTH 

The eldest of the hours of spring, 
Into the winter wandering, 
Looked upon the leafless wood; 

And smiled upon the silent sea, 
And bade the frozen streams be free; 
And waked to music all the fountains, 
And breathed upon the rigid mountains. 

The Pine Forest. 

MARCH FIFTH 

Who made that sense which, when the winds of 

spring 

In rarest visitation, or the voice 

Of one beloved heard in youth alone, 

Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim 

The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers, 

And leaves this peopled earth a solitude 

When it returns no more ? 

Prometheus Unbound. 

[22] 



MARCH SIXTH 

Mighty Earth 

From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, 

In vesper low or joyous orison, 

Lifts still its solemn voice. 

Alastor. 

MARCH SEVENTH 

The good want power, but to weep barren tears. 
The powerful goodness want : worse need for 

them. 
The wise want love; and those who love want 

wisdom; 
And all best things are thus confused to ill. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

MARCH EIGHTH 

When musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 

All vital things that wake to bring 

News of birds and blossoming, 

Sudden thy shadow fell on me : 
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy ! 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. 

MARCH NINTH 

Then gentle winds arose 
With many a mingled close 
Of wild iEolian sound and mountain odour keen. 

Ode to Naples. 

[23] 



MARCH TENTH 

I loved, I love, and when I love no more 
Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair 
To ring the knell of youth. 

Fragments. 

MARCH ELEVENTH 

The breath of the moist earth is light 
Around its unexpanded buds; 
Like many a voice of one delight, 
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, 
The City's voice itself is soft, like Solitude's. 

Stanzas. 

MARCH TWELFTH 

Birth but wakes the spirit to the sense 

Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape 

New modes of passion to its frame may lend. 

Queen Mab. 

MARCH THIRTEENTH 

Weary wind, who wanderest 
Like the world's rejected guest, 
Hast thou still some secret nest 
On the tree or billow ? 

The World" s Wanderers. 



[24] 



MARCH FOURTEENTH 

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw 

down 

Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, 

Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown, 

For whom should she have waked the sullen year ? 

To Phcebus was not Hyacinth so dear, 

Not to himself Narcissus, as to both 

Thou Adonais : wan they stand and sere 

Amid the faint companions of their youth, 

With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing 

ruth. 

Adonais. 

MARCH FIFTEENTH 

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, 
And the young winds fed it with silver dew, 
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 
And closed them beneath the kisses of night. 

The Sensitive Pla?it. 

MARCH SIXTEENTH 

A boat of rare device, which had no sail 
But its own curved prow of thin moonstone, 
Wrought like a web of texture fine and frail, 
To catch those gentlest winds which are not 

known 
To breathe, but by the steady speed alone 
With which it cleaves the sparkling sea. 

Revolt of Islam. 

[25] 



MARCH SEVENTEENTH 

The hoary grove 
Waxed green — and flowers burst forth like 

starry beams; — 
The grass in the warm sun did start and move, 
And sea-buds burst under the waves serene. 

Prince Athanase. 

MARCH EIGHTEENTH 

For love, and beauty, and delight, 
There is no death nor change. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

MARCH NINETEENTH 

All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when nignt is bare, 
From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is 
. overflowed. 

To a Skylark. 

MARCH TWENTIETH 

I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child, 
By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen; 
And near the waves, and through the forests 

wild 
I roamed, to storm and darkness reconciled : 

[26] 



For I was calm while tempest shook the sky : 
But when the breathless heavens in beauty 

smiled, 
I wept, sweet tears, yet too tumultuously 
For peace, and clasped my hands aloft in ecstasy. 

Revolt of Islam. 

MARCH TWENTY-FIRST 

Radiant Sister of the Day, 
Awake ! arise ! and come away ! 
To the wild woods and the plains, 
And the pools where winter rains 
Image all their roof of leaves, 
Where the pine its garland weaves 
Of sapless green and ivy dun 
Round stems that never kiss the sun; 
Where the lawns and pastures be, 
And the sandhills of the sea; — 
Where the melting hoar-frost wets 
The daisy-star that never sets, 
And wind-flowers, and violets, 
Which yet join not scent to hue, 
Crown the pale year weak and new. 

To Jane: The Invitation. 

MARCH TWENTY-SECOND 

Lo, where red morning through the woods 
Is burning o'er the dew. 

Rosalind and Helen. 

[27] 



MARCH TWENTY-THIRD 

And the Spring arose on the garden fair, 
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere, 
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast 
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH 

If night is mute, yet the returning sun 
Kindles the voices of the morning birds. 

Hellas. 

MARCH TWENTY-FIFTH 

From the moss violets and jonquils peep, 
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain 
Till you might faint with that delicious pain. 

Epipsychidion. 

MARCH TWENTY-SIXTH 

Though storms may break the primrose on its 

stalk, 
Though frosts may blight the freshness of its 

bloom, 
Yet Spring's awakening breath will woo the 

earth, 
To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower, 
That blooms in mossy banks and darksome 

glens, 
Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. 

Queen Mab. 

[28] 



MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH 

And, hark ! their sweet, sad voices ! 't is despair 
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies 
And happy regions of eternal hope. 
Therefore, O Spirit ! fearlessly bear on. 

Queen Mab. 

MARCH TWENTY-NINTH 

In its sleep some odorous violet, 

While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet, 

Breathes in prophetic dreams of day's uprise. 

Revolt of Islam. 

MARCH THIRTIETH 

The snowdrop, and then the violet, 

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, 

And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, 

sent 
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

MARCH THIRTY-FIRST 

We know not where we go, or what sweet dream 
May pilot us through caverns strange and fair 
Of far and pathless passion, while the stream 
Of life, our bark doth on its whirlpools bear, 

[29] 



Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air; 
Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion 
Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there 
Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean 
Of universal life, attuning its commotion. 

Revolt of Islam. 



[30] 



APRIL 



APRIL FIRST 

AND gaily now meseems serene earth wears 
• The bloomy spring's star-bright investi- 
ture, 
A vision which aught sad from sadness might 

allure. 

Revolt of Islam. 

APRIL SECOND 

Through wood and stream and field and hill and 

Ocean 
A quickening life from the Earth's heart has 

burst, 

As it has ever done, with change and motion, 

From the great morning of the world when first 

God dawned on Chaos. 

Adonais. 

APRIL THIRD 

The chain is loosed, the sails are spread, 
The living breath is fresh behind, 

As, with dews and sunrise fed, 

Comes the laughing morning wind. 

Boat on the Serchio. 

[31 ] 



APRIL FOURTH 

Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! 

Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 
Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

To a Skylark. 

APRIL FIFTH 

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, 

From the seas and the streams; 
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid 

In their noonday dreams. 
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet birds every one, 
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, 

As she dances about the sun. 

The Cloud. 

APRIL SIXTH 

O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and 

gladness, 
Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best and fairest! 
Whence comest thou, when, with dark winter's 

sadness 
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest; 
Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest 
Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet; 
Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou 

bearest 

[32] 



Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with 
gentle feet, 

Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding- 
sheet. 

Revolt of Islam. 

APRIL SEVENTH 

Music is in the sea and air, 
Winged clouds soar here and there, 
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

APRIL EIGHTH 

A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning; 
A Vision like incarnate April, warning, 
With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy 
Into his summer grave. 

Epipsychidion. 

APRIL NINTH 

What is heaven ? a globe of dew, 

Filling in the morning new 

Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken 

On an unimagined world : 

Constellated suns unshaken, 

Orbits measureless, are furled 

In that frail and fading sphere. 

With ten millions gathered there, 

To tremble, gleam, and disappear. 

Ode to Heaven. 

[33] 



APRIL TENTH 

Sound of vernal showers 

On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awakened flowers, 
All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth 
surpass. 

To a Skylark. 

APRIL ELEVENTH 

The airs and streams renew their joyous tone; 
The ants, the bees, the swallows, reappear; 
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's 

bier; 
The amorous birds now pair in every brake, 
And build their mossy homes in field and brere; 
And the green lizard, and the golden snake, 
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance 

awake. 

Adonais. 

APRIL TWELFTH 

The hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, 
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew 
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, 
It was felt like an odour within the sense. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

[34] 



APRIL THIRTEENTH 

Weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, 
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew 
Out of their mossy cells for ever burst; 
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told 
.Of grassy paths and woods, lawn-interspersed, 
With overarching elms and caverns cold, 
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood. 

The Triumph of Life. 

APRIL FOURTEENTH 

From that lone ruin, 

. . . might be heard the murmur of the motion 

Of waters, as in spots for ever haunted 

By the choicest winds of Heaven, which are 

enchanted 

To music, by the wand of Solitude, 

That wizard wild. 

Revolt of Islam. 

APRIL FIFTEENTH 

What hand would crush the silken-winged fly, 
The youngest of inconstant April's minions, 
Because it cannot climb the purest sky, 
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions ? 

Ded. to Witch of Atlas. 

APRIL SIXTEENTH 

Power dwells apart in its tranquillity 

Remote, serene, and inaccessible. 

Mont Blanc. 

[35] 



APRIL SEVENTEENTH 

Away, away, from men and towns, 
To the wild wood and the downs — 
To the silent wilderness 
Where the soul need not repress 
Its music lest it should not find 
An echo in another's mind, 
While the touch of Nature's art 
Harmonizes heart to heart. 

To Jane : The Invitation. 

APRIL EIGHTEENTH 

Bright clouds float in heaven, 
Dew-stars gleam on earth, 
Waves assemble on ocean, 
They are gathered and driven 
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee ! 
They shake with emotion, 
They dance in their mirth. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

APRIL NINETEENTH 

The bare green hill 
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain, 
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water 
To the unpavilioned sky ! 

Prometheus Unbound. 

[36] 



APRIL TWENTIETH 

Two runnels of a rivulet, 
Between the close moss, violet-inwoven, 
Have made their path of melody, like sisters 
Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles, 
Turning their dear disunion to an isle 
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet, sad thoughts. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

APRIL TWENTY-FIRST 

Even the minutest molecule of light, 
That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow 
Fulfils its destined, though invisible work, 
The universal Spirit guides. 

Queen Mab. 

APRIL TWENTY-SECOND 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are bright'ning, 
Thou dost float and run, 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

To a Skylark. 

APRIL TWENTY-THIRD 

We will entangle buds and flowers and beams 
Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make 
Strange combinations out of common things. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

[37] 



APRIL TWENTY-FOURTH 

The presence of that fairest planet, 
Although unseen, is felt by one who hopes 
That his day's path may end as he began it, 
In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent 
Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it. 

The Triumph of Life. 

APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH 

Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its 

waters, 
And the ethereal shapes which are suspended 
Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters, 
The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended 
The colours of the air since first extended 
It cradled the young world, none wandered forth 

To see or feel. 

Revolt of Islam. 

APRIL TWENTY-SIXTH 

He heard 
The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung 
Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel 
An unaccustomed presence, and the sound 

Of the sweet brook. 

Alastor. 

APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH 

Multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds 
Were wandering in thick flocks along the 
mountains 

[38] 



Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind; 
And the white dew on the new-bladed grass, 
Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

APRIL TWENTY-EIGHTH 

I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, 
I walk over the mountains and the waves, 
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam; 
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves 
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air 
Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. 

Hymn of Apollo. 

APRIL TWENTY-NINTH 

To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot, 
To own all sympathies, and outrage none, 
And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought, 
Until life's sunny day is quite gone down, 
To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone, 
To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe; 
To live, as if to love and live were one. 

Revolt of Islam. 

APRIL THIRTIETH 

A wind arose among the pines; it shook 

The clinging music from their boughs, and then 

Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of 

ghosts 

Were heard. 

Prometheus Un hound. 

[39] 



MAY 



MAY FIRST 

T3EHOLD! Spring sweeps over the world 
•*~* again, 

Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings ; 
Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, 
And music on the waves and woods she flings, 
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless 
things. 

Re-volt of Islam. 



MAY SECOND 

I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, 
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, 
And gentle odours led my steps astray, 
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring 
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 
Under a copse, arid hardly dared to fling 
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 
But kissed it and then fled. 

The Question. 



[41] 



MAY THIRD 

I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers 
With their ethereal colours; the Moon's globe 
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers 
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; 
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine, 
Are portions of one power, which is mine. 

Hymn of Apollo. 

MAY FOURTH 

A gentle rivulet, 
Whose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep 
Bent the soft grass, and kept for ever wet 
The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the 

grove 
With sounds, which whoso hears must needs 

forget 
All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love, 
Which they had known before that hour of rest. 

The Triumph of Life. 

MAY FIFTH 

Sometimes between the wide and flowering 

meadows, 
Mile after mile we sailed, and 't was delight 
To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows 
Over the grass. 

Revolt of Islam. 

[42] 



MAY SIXTH 

His head was bound with pansies over-blown, 
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; 
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, 
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew, 
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, 
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that 

crew 
He came the last, neglected and apart : 
A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's 

dart. 

Adonais. 

MAY SEVENTH 

The pine boughs are singing 
Old songs with new gladness, 
The billows and fountains 
Fresh music are flinging, 
Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea; 
The storms mock the mountains 
With the thunder of gladness. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

MAY EIGHTH 

How beautiful this night ! the balmiest sigh, 

Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, 

Were discord to the speaking quietude 

That wraps this moveless scene. 

Queen Mab. 

[43] 



MAY NINTH 

'T was the season fair and mild 
When April has wept itself to May. 

Rosalind and Helen. 

MAY TENTH 

The pyramids 
Of the tall cedar overarching, frame 
Most solemn domes within, and far below, 
Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, 
The ash and the acacia floating hang 
Tremulous and pale. 

Soft mossy lawns 
Beneath these canopies extend their swells, 
Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with 
« blooms 

Minute yet beautiful. 

Alastor. 

MAY ELEVENTH 

A scene of joy and wonder to behold 

That river's shapes and shadows changing ever, 

Where the broad sunrise, filled with deepening 

gold, 
Its whirlpools, where all hues did spread and 

quiver, 
And where melodious falls did burst and shiver 
Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and 

spray 
Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river. 

Revolt of Islam. 

[44] 



MAY TWELFTH 

Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze, 
Pierce with song heaven's silent light, 
Enchant the day that too swiftly flees, 
To check its flight ere the cave of night. 

Prometheus Unbound. 



MAY THIRTEENTH 

But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small 

fruit 
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, 
Received more than all, it loved more than ever, 
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the 

giver. 

The Sensitive Plant. 



MAY FOURTEENTH 

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, 
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, 
The constellated flower that never sets; 
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth 
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower 

that wets — 
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth — 
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, 
When the low wind its playmate's voice it hears. 

The Question. 



[45] 



MAY FIFTEENTH 

And we will search, with looks and words of love, 
For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last, 
Our unexhausted spirits; and like lutes 
Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind, 
Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new, 
From difference sweet where discord cannot be. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

MAY SIXTEENTH 

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task 

Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth 

Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask 

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth — 

The smokeless altars of the mountain-snows 

Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth 

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, 

To which the birds tempered their matin lay. 

The Triumph of Life. 

MAY SEVENTEENTH 

The artist wrought this loved Guitar, 
And taught it justly to reply, 
To all who question skilfully, 
In language gentle as its own, 
Whispering in enamoured tone 
Sweet oracles of woods and dells, 
And summer winds in sylvan cells; 
For it had learnt all harmonies 
Of the plains and of the skies, 

[46] 



Of the forests and the mountains, 
And the many-voiced fountains; 
The clearest echoes of the hills, 
The softest notes of falling rills, 
The melodies of birds and bees, 
The murmuring of summer seas, 
And pattering rain, and breathing dew, 
And airs of evening. 



Ariel to Miranda. 



MAY EIGHTEENTH 

Lilies for a bridal bed, 
Roses for a matron's head, 
Violets for a maiden dead, 
Pansies let my flowers be. 



A Lament. 



MAY NINETEENTH 

It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, 
Cradled and hung in clear tranquillity; 
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer, 
Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. 

Epipsychidion. 

MAY TWENTIETH 

Then the pied windflowers and the tulip tall, 
And narcissi, the fairest among them all, 
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, 
Till they die of their own dear loveliness. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

[47] 



MAY TWENTY-FIRST 

And hither come, sped on the charmed winds, 

The echoes of the human world, which tell 

Of the low voice of love, almost unheard, 

And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music, 

Itself the echo of the heart. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

MAY TWENTY-SECOND 

And one with trembling hands clasps his cold 

head, 
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and 

cries; 
"Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead : 
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies 
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain." 

Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise ! 

Adonais. 

MAY TWENTY-THIRD 

The awful shadow of some unseen Power 
Floats though unseen among us; visiting 
This various world with as inconstant wing 
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower ; 
Like moonbeams that blind some piny mountain 
shower, 
It visits with inconstant glance 
Each human heart and countenance; 

[48] 



Like hues and harmonies of evening, 
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, 
Like memory of music fled, 
Like aught that for its grace may be 
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. 

MAY TWENTY-FOURTH 

Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, 
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined 
On the level quivering line 
Of the waters crystalline. 

Lines among the Euganean Hills. 

MAY TWENTY-FIFTH 

Oh thou, who plumed with strong desire 

Would float above the earth, beware ! 

A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire — 

Night is coming ! 

Bright are the regions of the air, 

And among the winds and beams 

It were delight to wander there — 

Night is coming! 

The Two Spirits. 

MAY TWENTY-SIXTH 

I arose, and for a space 
The scene of woods and waters seemed to keep, 
Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace 
Of light diviner than the common sun 

[49] 



Sheds on the common earth, and all the place 
Was filled with magic sounds woven into one 
Oblivious melody, confusing sense 
Amid the gliding waves and shadows dun. 

The Triumph of Life. 

MAY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured May, 
And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine 
Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; 
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, 
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; 
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, 
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. 

The Question. 

MAY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Around, a forest grew 
Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover 
The waning stars prankt in the waters blue, 
And trembled in the wind which from the morn- 
ing flew. 

Revolt of Islam. 

MAY TWENTY-NINTH 

There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; 
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, 
As clear as elemental diamond, 

Or serene morning air. 

Epipsychidion. 

[50] 



MAY THIRTIETH 

It knew 
That seldom-heard mysterious sound, 
Which, driven in its diurnal round, 
As it floats through boundless day, 
Our world enkindles on its way. 

Ariel to Miranda. 



MAY THIRTY-FIRST 

The matin winds from the expanded flowers 
Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken 
The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken 
From every living heart which it possesses. 

Ginenjra. 



[Si] 



JUNE 



JUNE FIRST 

|"T was the azure time of June, 
■*• When the skies are deep in the stainless noon, 
And the warm and fitful breezes shake 
The fresh green leaves of the hedge-row briar. 
And there were odours then to make 
The very breath we did respire 
A liquid element, whereon 
Our spirits, like delighted things 
That walk the air on subtle wings, 
Floated and mingled far away, 
'Mid the warm winds of the sunny day. 

Rosalind and Helen. 

JUNE SECOND 

There stood 
A Shape all light, which with one hand did fling 
Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn, 
And the invisible rain did ever sing 
A silver music on the mossy lawn; 
And still before me on the dusky grass 
Iris her many-coloured scarf had drawn. 

The Triumph of Life. 

[53] 



JUNE THIRD 

We sail on, away, afar, 
Without a course, without a star, 
But by the instinct of sweet music driven; 
Till through Elysian garden islets 
By thee, most beautiful of pilots, 
Where never mortal pinnace glided, 
The boat of my desire is guided : 
Realms where the air we breathe is love, 
Which in the winds on the waves doth move, 
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above. 

Prometheus Unbound. 
JUNE FOURTH 

The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm 
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm 
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, 
From which its fields and woods ever renew 
Their green and golden immortality. 

Epipsychidion. 
JUNE FIFTH 

The deathless stars are bright above ; 
If I would cross the shade of night, 
Within my heart is the lamp of love, 

And that is day! 
And the moon will smile with gentle light 
On my golden plumes where'er they move; 
The meteors will linger round my flight 

And make night day. 

The Two Spirits. 

[54] 



JUNE SIXTH 

What thou art we know not; 
What is most like thee ? 

Like a rose embowered 

In its own green leaves, 
By warm winds deflowered, 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy- 
winged thieves. 

To a Skylark. 

JUNE SEVENTH 

All flowers in field or forest which unclose 
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, 
Swinging their censers in the element, 
With orient incense lit by the new ray 
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent 
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air. 

The Triumph of Life. 

JUNE EIGHTH 

Why must I think how oft we two 
Have sate together near the river springs, 
Under the green pavilion which the willow 
Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain, 
Strewn by the nurslings that linger there, 
Over that islet paved with flowers and moss, 

[55] 



While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crim- 
son snow, 

Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the 
pine, 

Sad prophetess of sorrows not our own. 

Fragments. 

JUNE NINTH 

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, 
Which led through the garden along and across, 
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, 
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees, 

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells 
As fair as the fabulous asphodels, 
And flowrets which drooping as day drooped too 
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, 
To roof the glowworm from the evening dew. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

JUNE TENTH 

And when the evening star came forth 

Above the curve of the new bent moon, 

And light and sound ebbed from the earth, 

Like the tide of the full and weary sea 

To the depths of its tranquillity, 

Our natures to its own repose 

Did the earth's breathless sleep attune. 

Rosalind and Helen. 

[56] 



JUNE ELEVENTH 

As a tuberose 
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie 
Like clouds above the flower from which they 

rose, 
The singing of that happy nightingale 
In this sweet forest, from the golden close 
Of evening, till the star of dawn may fail, 
Was interfused upon the silentness; 
The folded roses and the violets pale 
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss 
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear 
Of the night-cradled earth; . . . 

Was awed into delight, and by the charm 

Girt as with an interminable zone, 

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm 

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion 

Out of their dreams; harmony became love. 

The Woodman and the Nightingale. 

JUNE TWELFTH 

It was a feast 
Whene'er he found those globes of deep red gold 
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth 

bear, 
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere. 

Marenghi. 

[57] 



JUNE THIRTEENTH 

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, 
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, 
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare. 

'The Sensitive Plant. 



JUNE FOURTEENTH 

Underneath a cloud of dew 
Embodied in the windless Heaven of June, 
Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon 
Burns, inextinguishably beautiful. 

Epipsychidion. 



JUNE FIFTEENTH 

The rivulet 
Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine 
Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell 
Among the moss with hollow harmony 
Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones 
It danced; like childhood laughing as it went: 
Then through the plain in tranquil wanderings 

crept, 
Reflecting every herb and drooping bud 
That overhung its quietness. 

Alastor. 



58] 



JUNE SIXTEENTH 

The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream — 

The champak odours fail 
Like sweet thoughts in a dream; 
The nightingale's complaint, 
It dies upon her heart, 

As I must die on thine, 
Beloved as thou art ! 

Lines to an Indian Air. 

JUNE SEVENTEENTH 

And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; 
The light clear element which the isle wears 
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, 
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, 
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep. 

Epipsychidion. 

JUNE EIGHTEENTH 

We strew these opiate flowers 

On thy restless pillow, — 
They were stripped from orient bowers, 
By the Indian billow. 
Be thy sleep 
Calm and deep. 

Hellas. 

[59] 



JUNE NINETEENTH 

The aerial hue 
Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

JUNE TWENTIETH 

There is a cave, 
All overgrown with trailing odorous plants, 
Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers, 
And paved with veined emerald, and a fountain 
Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound. 
From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears 
Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires, 
Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

JUNE TWENTY-FIRST 

And from the sea there rise, and from the sky 
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, 
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, 
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside. 

Epipsychidion. 

JUNE TWENTY-SECOND 

We wandered to the Pine Forest 

That skirts the Ocean's foam, 
The lightest wind was in its nest, 

The tempest in its home. 

[60] 



The whispering waves were half asleep, 

The clouds were gone to play, 
And on the woods, and on the deep, 

The smile of Heaven lay. 

The Pine Forest. 

JUNE TWENTY-THIRD 

The fountains mingle with the river, 

And the rivers with the ocean, 
The winds of heaven mix for ever 

With a sweet emotion; 
Nothing in the world is single; 

All things by a law divine 
In one another's being mingle — 

Why not I with thine ? 

Lo<ve* s Philosophy. 



JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH 

Music, when soft voices die, 
Vibrates in the memory — 
Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 
Live within the sense they quicken. 

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, 
Are heaped for the beloved's bed; 
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 
Love itself shall slumber on. 

7o- 
[61 ] 



JUNE TWENTY-FIFTH 

The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer 
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls 
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls 
Illuming, with sound that never fails 
Accompany the noonday nightingales. 

Epipsychidion. 

JUNE TWENTY-SIXTH 

We lived a day as we were wont to live, 
But Nature had a robe of glory on, 
And the bright air o'er every shape did weave 
Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone, 
The leafless bough among the leaves alone, 
Had being clearer than its own could be. 

Revolt of Islam. 

JUNE TWENTY-SEVENTH 

And the wild odour of the forest flowers, 
The music of the living grass and air, 
The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams 



Seem kneaded into one aerial mass 
Which drowns the sense. 

Prometheus Unbound. 



[62] 



JUNE TWENTY-EIGHTH 

The woven leaves 
Make network of the dark blue light of day, 
And the night's noontide clearness, mutable 
As shapes in the weird clouds. 

Alastor. 

JUNE TWENTY-NINTH 

I arise from dreams of thee 

In the first sweet sleep of night, 

When the winds are breathing low, 
And the stars are shining bright: 
I arise from dreams of thee, 
And a spirit in my feet 

Hath led me — who knows how ? 
To thy chamber window, sweet ! 

Lines to an Indian Air. 

JUNE THIRTIETH 

This day, which, when the sun 
Shall on its stainless glory set, 
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory 
yet. 

Stanzas. 



[63] 



JULY 



JULY FIRST 

T SEE the Deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple seaweeds strown ; 
I see the waves upon the shore, 
Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown. 

Stanzas. 



JULY SECOND 

Like a glowworm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it 
from the view. 

To a Skylark. 

JULY THIRD 

Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves, 
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist. 

Prometheus Unbound. 



[6 5 



JULY FOURTH 

Day had awakened all things that be, 

The lark and the thrush and the swallow free, 

And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe, 

And the matin-bell and the mountain bee : 

Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn, 

Glowworms went out on the river's brim, 

Like lamps which a student forgets to trim : 

The beetle forgot to wind his horn, 

The crickets were still in the meadow and hill. 

Boat on the Serchio. 

JULY FIFTH 

And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains 
From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling 
The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray, 
From some Atlantic islet scattered up, 
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

JULY SIXTH 

As I looked, the bright omnipresence 
Of morning through the orient cavern flowed, 
And the sun's image radiantly intense 
Burned on the waters of the well that glowed 
Like gold, and threaded all the forest's maze 
With winding paths of emerald fire. 

The Triumph of Life. 

[66] 



JULY SEVENTH 

Oh, follow, follow ! 

Through the caverns hollow, 

As the song floats thou pursue, 

Where the wild bee never flew, 

Through the noontide darkness deep, 

By the odour-breathing sleep 

Of faint night-flowers, and the waves 

At the fountain-lighted caves, 

While our music, wild and sweet, 

Mocks thy gently-falling feet. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

JULY EIGHTH 

Even as a vapour fed with golden beams 

That ministered on sunlight, ere the west 

Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame — 

No sense, no motion, no divinity — 

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings 

The breath of heaven did wander — a bright 

stream 

Once fed with many-voiced waves — a dream 

Of youth, which night and time have quenched 

for ever. 

Alastor. 

JULY NINTH 

He lives, he wakes — 't is Death is dead, not he; 
Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou, young Dawn, 
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee 

[6 7 ] 



The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan ! 
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou 

Air, 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare 
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its 

despair. 



Adonais. 



JULY TENTH 

Swiftly walk over the western wave, 

Spirit of Night ! 
Out of the misty eastern cave, 
Where, all the long and lone daylight, 
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, 
Which make thee terrible and dear, — 

Swift be thy flight ! 



To Night. 



JULY ELEVENTH 

Then weave the web of the mystic measure; 
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the 

earth, 
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure, 
Fill the dance and the music of mirth, 
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by 
To an ocean of splendour and harmony ! 

Prometheus Unbound. 

[68] 



JULY TWELFTH 

From the forests and highlands 

We come, we come; 
From the river-girt islands, 
Where loud waves are dumb 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 

The wind in the reeds and the rushes, 

The bees on the bells of thyme, 
The birds on the myrtle bushes, 
The cicale above in the lime, 
And the lizards below in the grass, 
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 

Hymn of Pan. 

JULY THIRTEENTH 

The shadow of his presence made my world 
A paradise. All familiar things he touched, 
All common words he spoke, became to me 
Like forms and sounds of a diviner world. 

Fragments . 

JULY FOURTEENTH 

As the moon's soft splendour 
O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven 
Is thrown, 
So thy voice most tender 
To the strings without soul has given 
Its own. 

[6 9 ] 



The stars will awaken, 

Though the moon sleep a full hour later 

To-night ! 

No leaf will be shaken 

Whilst the dews of thy melody scatter 

Delight. 

To a Lady singing to her Accompaniment 
on the Guitar. 



JULY FIFTEENTH 

The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 

I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; 
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 

The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 

Adonais. 

JULY SIXTEENTH 

The everlasting universe of things 

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid 

waves, 
Now dark — now glittering — now reflecting 

gloom — 
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs 
The source of human thought its tribute brings 
Of waters, — with a sound but half its own, 
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume 
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, 

[70] 



Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, 
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast 

river 
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. 

Mont Blanc. 



JULY SEVENTEENTH 

And there is heard the ever-moving air, 
Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds, 
And bees; and all around are mossy seats, 
And the rough walls are clothed with long soft 

grass; 
A simple dwelling, which shall be our own. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

JULY EIGHTEENTH 

But their rage would be subdued 
By that clime divine and calm, 
And the winds whose wings rain balm 
On the uplifted soul, and leaves 
Under which the bright sea heaves; 
While each breathless interval 
In their whisperings musical 
The inspired soul supplies 
With its own deep melodies. 

Lines among Euganean Hills. 



[71 ] 



JULY NINETEENTH 

One darkest glen 
Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with 

jasmine, 
A soul-dissolving odour, to invite 
To some more lovely mystery. 

Alastor. 



JULY TWENTIETH 

Canst thou imagine where those spirits live 
Which make such delicate music in the woods ? 



Under pink blossoms or within the bells 
Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep, 
Or on their dying odours, when they die, 
Or on the sunlight of the sphered dew ? 

Prometheus Unbound. 



JULY TWENTY-FIRST 

The wand-like lily . . . lifted up, 

As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, 

Till the fiery star, which is its eye, 

Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky, 

The Sensitive Plant. 



In) 



JULY TWENTY-SECOND 

We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught; 

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 

thought. 

To a Skylark. 

JULY TWENTY-THIRD 

It is an isle under Ionian skies, 
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, 

The blue iEgean girds this chosen home, 
With ever-changing sound and light and foam, 
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar; 
And all the winds wandering along the shore 

Undulate with the undulating tide. 

Epipsychidion. 

JULY TWENTY-FOURTH 

Some say, when nights are dry and clear, 
And the death dews sleep on the morass, 
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller 

Which make night day : 
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass 

Upborne by her wild and glittering hair, 

And when he awakes on the fragrant grass, 

He finds night day. 

The Two Spirits. 

[73] 



JULY TWENTY-FIFTH 

Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — - 
He hath awakened from the dream of life — 
'T is we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep 
With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
And in mad trance strike with our spirits' knife 
Invulnerable nothings. 

Adonais. 

JULY TWENTY-SIXTH 

The silver noon into that winding dell, 
With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops, 
Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell; 
A green and glowing light, like that which drops 
From folded lilies in which glowworms dwell, 
When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

JULY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

The Spirit whom I loved in solitude 
Sustained his child; the tempest-shaken wood, 
The waves, the fountains, and the hush of night — 
These were his voice, and well I understood 
His smile divine, when the calm sea was bright 
With silent stars, and Heaven was breathless 
with delight. 

Revolt of Islam. 

[74] 



JULY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, 
The sweetest flower for scent that blows; 
And all rare blossoms from every clime 
Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

JULY TWENTY-NINTH 

We paused amid the Pines that stood 

The giants of the waste, 
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude, 

As serpents interlaced. 

How calm it was — the silence there 

By such a chain was bound, 
That even the busy woodpecker 

Made stiller by her sound 

The inviolable quietness; 

The breath of peace we drew, 
With its soft motion made not less 

The calm that round us grew. 

The Pine Forest. 



JULY THIRTIETH 

When I arose and saw the dawn, 
I sighed for thee; 
When light rode high, and the dew was gone, 

[75] 



And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, 
And the weary Day turned to his rest, 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 
I sighed for thee. 

To Night. 

JULY THIRTY-FIRST 

Ah ! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, 

Or the death they bear, 
The heart which tender thought clothes like a 
dove 
With the wings of care; 
In the battle, in the darkness, in the need, 

Shall mine cling to thee, 
Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, 
It may bring to thee. 

From the Arabic {an Imitation). 



[ 7 6 



AUGUST 



AUGUST FIRST 

OPIRIT of Beauty, that dost consecrate 

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon 
Of human thought or form, — ... 
Thy light alone — like mist o'er mountains 

driven, 
Or music by the night-wind sent 
Through strings of some still instrument, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. 



AUGUST SECOND 

She would write strange dreams upon the brain 
Of those who were less beautiful, and make 
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain 
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake 
Which the sand covers — all his evil gain 
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake 
Into a beggar's lap; — the lying scribe 
Would his own lies betray without a bribe. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

[77] 



AUGUST THIRD 

He was a gentle boy, 

And in all gentle sports took joy; 

Oft in a dry leaf for a boat, 

With a small feather for a sail, 

His fancy on that spring would float, 

If some invisible breeze might stir 

Its marble calm. 

Rosalind and Helen. 

AUGUST FOURTH 

A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift — 

A Love in desolation masked; — a Power 

Girt round with weakness; — it can scarce uplift 

The weight of the superincumbent hour; 

It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 

A breaking billow; — even whilst we speak 

Is it not broken ? . . . 

He, as I guess, 

Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, 

Actaeon-like. 

Adonais. 

AUGUST FIFTH 

Day had kindled the dewy woods, 

And the rocks above and the stream below, 

And the vapours in their multitudes, 

And the Apennine's shroud of summer snow, 

And clothed with light of aery gold 

The mists in their eastern caves uprolled. 

The Boat on the Serchio. 

[78] 



AUGUST SIXTH 

The light winds which from unsustaining wings 
Shed the music of many murmurings; 
The beams which dart from many a star 
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar; 

The plumed insects swift and free, 
Like golden boats on a sunny sea, 
Laden with light and odour, which pass 
Over the gleam of the living grass; 

Each and all like ministering angels were 
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear. 

The Sensitive Plant. 



AUGUST SEVENTH 

Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong, 

On which, like one in trance upborne, 

Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep, 

Rejoicing like a cloud of morn. 

Now 't is the breath of summer night, 

Which when the starry waters sleep, 

Round western isles, with incense-blossoms 

bright, 
Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous 

flight. 

To Constantia, Singing. 

[79] 



AUGUST EIGHTH 

Thy brother Death came, and cried, 

Wouldst thou me ? 
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, 

Murmured like a noontide bee, 
Shall I nestle near thy side ? 
Wouldst thou me ? — And I replied, 
No, not thee ! 



To Night. 



AUGUST NINTH 

On a poet's lips I slept 

Dreaming like a love-adept 

In the sound his breathing kept; 

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 

But feeds on the aerial kisses 

Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. 

He will watch from dawn to gloom 

The lake-reflected sun illume 

The yellow-bees in the ivy-bloom, 

Nor heed nor see what things they be; 

But from these create he can 

Forms more real than living man, 

Nurslings of immortality. 

Prometheus Unbound. 
AUGUST TENTH 

The sun is warm, the sky is clear, 

The waves are dancing fast and bright, 

Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 

The purple noon's transparent light. 

Stanzas. 

[80] 



AUGUST ELEVENTH 

Away, unlovely dreams ! 

Away, false shapes of sleep ! 

Be his, as heaven seems, 

Clear and bright and deep, 

Soft as love, and calm as death, 

Sweet as a summer night without a breath. 

Hellas. 

AUGUST TWELFTH 

For me, and those I love, 
May a windless bower be built, 
Far from passion, pain, and guilt, 
In a dell 'mid lawny hills, 
Which the wild sea-murmur fills, 
And soft sunshine, and the sound 
Of old forests echoing round, 
And the light and smell divine 
Of all flowers that breathe and shine. 

Lines among Euganean Hills. 

AUGUST THIRTEENTH 

Through the dell, 
Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep 
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades 
Like vaporous shapes half seen. 

Alastor. 

[81 ] 



AUGUST FOURTEENTH 

Parasite flowers illumine with dewy gems 
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky 
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery 
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, 
Or fragments of the day's intense serene; 
Working mosaic on their Parian floors. 

Epipsychidion. 

AUGUST FIFTEENTH 

And out of the cups of the heavy flowers 
She emptied the rain of the thunder showers. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

AUGUST SIXTEENTH 

We stood beside the pools that lie 

Under the forest bough, 
And each seemed like unto a sky 

Gulfed in a world below; 

In which the massy forests grew, 

As in the upper air, , 

More perfect both in shape and hue 

Than any waving there. 

And all was interfused beneath 

With an Elysium air, 

An atmosphere without a breath, 

A silence sleeping there. 

The Pine Forest. 

[82] 



AUGUST SEVENTEENTH 

He has outsoared the shadow of our night; 
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, 
And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
Can touch him not and torture not again. 

Adonais. 

AUGUST EIGHTEENTH 

I pant for the music which is divine, 

My heart in its thirst is a dying flower; 

Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine, 

Loosen the notes in a silver shower; 

Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain, 

I gasp, I faint, till they wake again. 

Music. 

AUGUST NINETEENTH 

I sit upon the sands alone, 
The lightning of the noontide ocean 
Is flashing round me, and a tone 
Arises from its measured motion, 
How sweet ! did any heart now share in my 
emotion. 

Stanzas. 

AUGUST TWENTIETH 

As one enamoured is upborne in dream 
O'er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist, 
To wondrous music, so this shape might seem 
Partly to tread the waves with feet which kissed 
The dancing foam; partly to glide along 

[83] 



The air which roughened the moist amethyst, 
Or the faint morning beams that fell among 
The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees; 
And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song 
Of leaves, and winds, and waves, and birds, 

and bees, 
And falling drops, moved to a measure new 

Yet sweet. 

The Triumph of Life. 

AUGUST TWENTY-FIRST 

The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near, 

'T is Adonais calls ! oh, hasten thither, 

No more let Life divide what Death can join 

together. 

Adonais. 

AUGUST TWENTY-SECOND 

A paradise of vaulted bowers, 
Lit by downward-gazing flowers, 
And watery paths that wind between 
Wildernesses calm and green, 
Peopled by shapes too bright to see. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD 

The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere 
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray; 
And pallid evening twines its beaming hair 
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day; 

[84] 



Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men, 
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. 

A Summer Evenings Lechlade. 

AUGUST TWENTY-FOURTH 

Narrow 
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, 
The life that wears, the spirit that creates 
One object, and one form, and builds thereby 
A sepulchre for its eternity. 

Epipsychidion. 

AUGUST TWENTY-FIFTH 

On the stream whose inconstant bosom 
Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom 
With golden and green light, slanting through 
Their heaven of many a tangled hue, 

Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, 

And starry river-buds glimmered by, 

And around them the soft stream did glide and 

dance 
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

AUGUST TWENTY-SIXTH 

It seemed that from the remotest seat 

Of the white mountain's waste, 
To the bright flower beneath our feet, 

A magic circle traced; 

[85] 



A spirit interfused around, 
A thinking silent life, 

To momentary peace it bound 
Our mortal Nature's strife. 



The Pine Forest. 



AUGUST TWENTY -SEVENTH 

Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, 
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks 
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day; 

Night followed, clad with stars. 

Alastor. 

AUGUST TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, 

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, 
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! 

Ode to the West Wind. 

AUGUST TWENTY-NINTH 

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, 

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; 
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and 
swim, 

[86] 



When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, 

Over a torrent sea, 
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, 
The mountains its columns be. 

The Cloud. 

AUGUST THIRTIETH 

Honey from silk-worms who can gather — 

Or silk from the yellow bee ? 
The grass may grow in winter weather 

As soon as hate in me. 

Lines to a Critic. 

AUGUST THIRTY-FIRST 

Now the last day of many days, 
All beautiful and bright as thou, 
The loveliest and the last, is dead, 
Rise, Memory, and write its praise ! 
And do thy wonted work and trace 
The epitaph of glory fled. 

The Pine Forest. 



[87] 



SEPTEMBER 



SEPTEMBER FIRST 

T OOK on yonder earth : 
- " —rf The golden harvests spring: the unfailing 

sun 
Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the 

trees, 
Arise in due succession; all things speak 
Peace, harmony, and love. 

Queen Mab. 



SEPTEMBER SECOND 

With a remembered friend I love 

To ride as I then rode; for the winds drove 

The living spray along the sunny air 

Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare, 

Stripped to their depths by the awakening 

North ; 
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke 

forth 
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent 
Into our hearts aerial merriment. 

Julian and Maddalo. 

[89] 



SEPTEMBER THIRD 

Swifter far than summer's flight, 
Swifter far than youth's delight, 
Swifter far than happy night, 

Art thou come and gone: 
As the earth when leaves are dead, 
As the night when sleep is sped, 
As the heart when joy is fled, 

I am left lone, alone. 



A Lament. 



SEPTEMBER FOURTH 

When evening descended from Heaven above, 
And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all 

love, 
And delight, though less bright, was far more 

deep, 
And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep, — 

The Sensitive Plant was the earliest 
Up-gathered into the bosom of rest; 
A sweet child weary of its delight. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

SEPTEMBER FIFTH 

Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill. 
The ringdove, in the embowering ivy, yet 
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit 
Round the evening tower, and the young stars 
glance 

[90] 



Between the quick bats in their twilight dance; 
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight 
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night 
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. 

Epipsychidion. 

SEPTEMBER SIXTH 

I love all that thou lovest, 

Spirit of Delight ! 
The fresh Earth in new leaves drest 

And the starry night; 
Autumn evening, and the morn 
When the golden mists are born. 

Song. 

SEPTEMBER SEVENTH 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest hear; 

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; 

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
Than thou, O uncontrollable ! If even 
I were as in my boyhood, and could be 

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, 
As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed 
Scarce seemed a vision. 

Ode to the West Wind. 

[ 91 3 



SEPTEMBER EIGHTH 

'T is the haunt 
Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach 
The wilds to love tranquillity. 

Alastor. 

SEPTEMBER NINTH 

Thou, too, O Comet, beautiful and fierce, 
The living Sun will feed thee from its urn 
Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn 
In thy last smiles; Adoring Even and Morn 
Will worship thee with incense of calm breath 

And lights and shadows. 

Epipsychidion. 

SEPTEMBER TENTH 

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, 

Then with unwilling steps I wander down 

Into the clouds of the Atlantic even; 

For grief that I depart they weep and frown : 

What look is more delightful than the smile 

With which I soothe them from the western 

isle ? 

Hymn of Apollo. 

SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH 

Rough wind, that moanest loud 

Grief too sad for song; 
Wild wind, when sullen cloud 

Knells all the night long; 

[92] 



Sad storm, whose tears are vain, 
Bare woods, whose branches stain, 
Deep caves and dreary main, 
Wail for the world's wrong. 



A Dirge. 



SEPTEMBER TWELFTH 

We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, 

Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, 

And wander in the meadows, or ascend 

The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens 

bend 
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; 
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, 
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea, 
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy. 

Epipsjchidion. 

SEPTEMBER THIRTEENTH 

My soul is an enchanted boat, 

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float 

Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; 

And thine doth like an angel sit 

Beside the helm conducting it, 

Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. 

It seems to float ever, for ever, 

Upon that many-winding river, 

Between mountains, woods, abysses, 

A paradise of wildernesses ! 

Prometheus Unbound. 

[93] 



SEPTEMBER FOURTEENTH 

Yon sun, 
Lights it the great alone ? Yon silver beams, 
Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch, 
Than on the dome of kings ? 

Queen Mab. 

SEPTEMBER FIFTEENTH 

If solitude hath ever led thy steps 
To the wild ocean's echoing shore. 

Thou must have marked the billowy mountain 

clouds 
Edged with intolerable radiancy 
Towering like rocks of jet 
Above the burning deep. 

Queen Mab. 

SEPTEMBER SIXTEENTH 

My coursers are fed with the lightning, 

They drink of the whirlwind's stream, 

And when the red morning is bright'ning 

They bathe in the fresh sunbeam; 

They have strength for their swiftness, I deem. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH 

The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew 
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

[94] 



SEPTEMBER EIGHTEENTH 

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: 
What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, 
My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 

Ode to the West Wind. 

SEPTEMBER NINETEENTH 

I see a chariot like that thinnest boat, 
In which the mother of the months is borne 
By ebbing night into her western cave 
When she upsprings from interlunar dreams. 

Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold, 
Such as the genii of the thunder-storm 
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea 
When the sun rushes under it. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTIETH 

Noon descends around me now: 
'T is the noon of Autumn's glow, 
When a soft and purple mist 
Like a vaporous amethyst, 
Or an air-dissolved star 
Mingling light and fragrance, far 

[95] 



From the curved horizon's bound 
To the point of heaven's profound, 
Fills the overflowing sky. 

Lines among Euganean Hills. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 

Day and night, aloof, from the high towers 
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem 
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream 
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and 

all that we 
Read in their smiles, and call reality. 

Epipsychidion. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 

All he had loved, and moulded into thought, 
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet 

sound, 
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, 
Wet with the tears which should adorn the 

ground, 

Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day; 

Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, 

Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, 

And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their 

dismay. 

Adonais. 

[96] 



SEPTEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 

Below lay stretched the universe ! 
There, far as the remotest line 
That bounds imagination's flight, 
Countless and unending orbs 
In mazy motion intermingled, 
Yet still fulfilled immutably 
Eternal nature's law. 



<$ueen Mab. 



SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

Her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep, 
To glide adown old Nilus, when he threads 
Egypt and ^Ethiopia, from the steep 
Of utmost Axume, until he spreads, 
Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep, 
His waters on the plain. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

The young moon 
When on the sunlit limits of the night 
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, 
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might, 
Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear 
The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim frown 
Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair. 

The Triumph of Life, 

[97] 



SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

Her voice was like the voice of his own soul 
Heard in the calm of thought; its music long, 
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held 
His inmost sense suspended in its web 
Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. 

Alastor. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

No longer where the woods to frame a bower 
With interlaced branches mix and meet, 
Or where with sound like many voices sweet, 
Waterfalls leap among wild islands green, 
Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat 
Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen. 

Ded. to Revolt of Islam. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

O'er the mountains of the earth 
From peak to peak leap on the beams of morn- 
ing's birth. 

Revolt of Islam. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 

To me welcome is day and night, 
Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn, 
Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs • 
The leaden-coloured east. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

[98] 



SEPTEMBER THIRTIETH 

And others came . . . Desires and Adorations, 
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, 
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering In- 
carnations 
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Fantasies; 
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam 
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 
Came in slow pomp; — the moving pomp might 

seem 
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. 

Adonais. 



[99] 



OCTOBER 



OCTOBER FIRST 

A ND here 

The children of the autumnal whirlwind 

bore, 

In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay 

Red, yellow, or ethereally pale, 

Rival the pride of summer. 

Alastor. 

OCTOBER SECOND 

As we rode, we talked ; and the swift thought, 

Winging itself with laughter, lingered not, 

But flew from brain to brain, — such glee was 

ours, 
Charged with light memories of remembered 

hours, 
None slow enough for sadness. 

Julian and Maddalo. 

OCTOBER THIRD 

The flower 
Glimmering at my feet; the line 
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine 
In the south dimly islanded; 
[ '01 ] 



And of living things each one; 

And my spirit which so long 

Darkened this swift stream of song, — 

Interpenetrated lie 

By the glory of the sky : 

Be it love, light, harmony, 

Odour, or the soul of all 

Which from Heaven like dew doth fall, 

Or the mind which feeds this verse 

Peopling the lone universe. 

Lines among Euganean Jiills. 

OCTOBER FOURTH 

The strange sleep 
Which, when the voices of the desert fail, 
Wraps all in its own deep eternity. 

Mont Blanc. 



OCTOBER FIFTH 

Dust to the dust ! but the pure spirit shall flow 
Back to the burning fountain whence it came, 
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow 
Through time and change unquenchably the 
same. 

Adonais. 



[ 102 ] 



OCTOBER SIXTH 

We might be all 
We dream of, happy, high, majestical. 
Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek, 
But in our minds ? And if we were not weak, 
Should we be less in deed than in desire ? 

Julian and Maddalo. 

OCTOBER SEVENTH 

But a friend's bosom 

Is as the inmost cave of our own mind, 

Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day, 

And from the all-communicating air. 

The Cenci. 

OCTOBER EIGHTH 

For wide expand 

Beneath the wan stars and descending moon 

Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, 

Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom 

Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills 

Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge 

Of the remote horizon. 

Alastor. 

OCTOBER NINTH 

She would often climb 
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack 
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, 
And like Arion on the dolphin's back 
Ride singing through the shoreless air. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

[ 103] 



OCTOBER TENTH 

Swift summer into the autumn flowed, 
And frost in the mist of the morning rode, 
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright, 
Mocking the spoil of the secret night. 

The Sensitive Plant. 



OCTOBER ELEVENTH 

Good night? ah! no; the hour is ill 
Which severs those it should unite; 
Let us remain together still, 
Then it will be good night. 

To hearts which near each other move 
From evening close to morning light, 
The night is good; because, my love, 
They never say good night. 

Good Night. 



OCTOBER TWELFTH 

Its home 
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes 
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods 
Over the snow. The secret strength of things 
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome 
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee ! 

Mont Blanc. 

[ 104 ] 



OCTOBER THIRTEENTH 

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 

And his burning plumes outspread, 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 

When the morning star shines dead. 
As on the jag of a mountain crag, 

Which an earthquake rocks and swings, 
An eagle alit one moment may sit 

In the light of its golden wings. 

The Cloud. 

OCTOBER FOURTEENTH 

Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light 
Speed thee in thy fiery flight, 
In what cavern of the night 

Will thy pinions close now ? 

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey 
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, 
In what depth of night or day 
Seekest thou repose now ? 

The World's Wanderers. 



OCTOBER FIFTEENTH 

Noon descends, and after noon 
Autumn's evening meets me soon, 
Leading the infantine moon, 

[ i°5] 



And that one star, which to her 
Almost seems to minister 
Half the crimson light she brings 
From the sunset's radiant springs. 

Lines among the Euganean Hills. 

OCTOBER SIXTEENTH 

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's 

commotion, 
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are 

shed, 
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and 

Ocean, 

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread 
On the blue surface of thine airy surge, 
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 
Of the horizon to the zenith's height 
The locks of the approaching storm. 

Ode to the West Wind. 

OCTOBER SEVENTEENTH 

The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass, 
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass; 
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful 

tone, 
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

[ 106] 



$ 

OCTOBER EIGHTEENTH 

The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home; 

No bird so wild but has its quiet nest 

When it no more would roam : 

The sleepless billows on the ocean's breast 

Break like a bursting heart and die in foam, 

And thus, at length, find rest. 



To 



OCTOBER NINETEENTH 

Glorious shapes have life in thee, 

Earth, and all earth's company; 

Living globes which ever throng 

Thy deep chasms and wildernesses; 

And green worlds that glide along; 

And swift stars with flashing tresses; 

And icy moons most cold and bright, 

And mighty suns beyond the night, 

Atoms of intensest light. 

Ode to Heaven. 

OCTOBER TWENTIETH 

Canst thou speak, sister ? All my words are 

drowned. 
Their beauty gives me voice. See how they 

float 
On their sustaining wings of skyey grain, 
Orange and azure deepening into gold : 
Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

[ r° 7 ] 



OCTOBER TWENTY-FIRST 

Heaven's ebon vault, 
Studded with stars unutterably bright, 
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur 

rolls, 
Seems like a canopy which love has spread 
To curtain her sleeping world. 

Queen Mab. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-SECOND 
Below lay stretched the universe ! 

Above, below, around 

The circling systems formed 

A wilderness of harmony: 

Each with undeviating aim, 

In eloquent silence, through the depths of space 

Pursued its wondrous way. 

Queen Mab. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-THIRD 

The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's 

bright isles, 
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles, 
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame 
Which ever is transformed, yet still the same, 
And warms not but illumes. 

Epipsychidion. 

[ ,08] 



OCTOBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve — dark, deep 
Ravine — 



Thou dost lie, 
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, 
Children of elder time, in whose devotion 
The chainless winds still come and ever came 
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging 
To hear — an old and solemn harmony. 

Mont Blanc. 



OCTOBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet, 
For sandals of lightning are on your feet, 
And your wings are soft and swift as thought, 
And your eyes are as love which is veiled not. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

An eagle fed with morning 
Scorns the embattled tempest's warning 
When she seeks her aerie hanging 
In the mountain-cedar's hair, 
And her brood expect the clanging 
Of her wings through the wild air. 

Hellas. 

[ 109 ] 



OCTOBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

The day becomes more solemn and serene 
When noon is past: there is a harmony 
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 
Which through the summer is not heard or seen. 
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

The stars burnt out in the pale blue air, 
And the thin white moon lay withering there, 
To tower, and cavern, and rift, and tree, 
The owl and the bat fled drowsily. 

The Boat on the Sere hi o. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-NINTH 

One from a lucid urn of starry dew 
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them; 
Another dipt her profuse locks, and threw 
The wreath upon him, like an anadem, 
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; 
Another in her wilful grief would break 
Her bow and winged reed, as if to stem 
A greater loss with one which was more weak; 
And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. 

Adonais. 

OCTOBER THIRTIETH 

Listen too, 
How every pause is filled with under-notes, 
Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones, 

[ no] 



Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul, 
As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air 
And gaze upon themselves within the sea. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

OCTOBER THIRTY-FIRST 

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; 
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; 
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; 
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. 
Neither to change, nor flatter, nor repent : 
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; 
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory. 

Prometheus Unbound. 



[hi] 



NOVEMBER 



NOVEMBER FIRST 

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is 

wailing, 
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers 
are dying, 

And the year 
On the earth her deathbed, in a shroud of 
leaves dead, 

Is lying. 

Autumn. 



NOVEMBER SECOND 

Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale 
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain; 
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale 
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain 
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, 
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, 
As Albion wails for thee. 

Adonais. 



[ "3] 



NOVEMBER THIRD 

Where are the Spirits fled ? 

Only a sense 
Remains of them, like the omnipotence 
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute 
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute, 
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul, 
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

NOVEMBER FOURTH 

So from his steps 
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade 
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds 

And musical motions. 

Alastor. 

NOVEMBER FIFTH 

Music lifted up the listening spirit 
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care, 
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

NOVEMBER SIXTH 

Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring, 

And infant Winter laughed upon the land 

All cloudlessly and cold; when I, desiring 

More in this world than any understand, 

Wept o'er the beauty, which like sea retiring, 

Had left the earth bare. 

* 

The Zucca. 

t "4] 



NOVEMBER SEVENTH 

On Chiavenna's precipice 
They raised a pyramid of lasting ice, 
Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun, 
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun, 
The last, when it had sunk; and through the 

night 
The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round 
Its glittering point. 

Rosalind and Helen. 

NOVEMBER EIGHTH 

The Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; 
Radiance and odour are not its dower; 
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full; 
It desires what it has not, the Beautiful. 

'The Sensitive Plant. 

NOVEMBER NINTH 

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power 
A poet's free and heavenly mind. 
If bright chameleons should devour 
Any food but beams and wind, 
They would grow as earthly soon 
As their brother lizards are. 
Children of a sunnier star, 
Spirits from beyond the moon, 
Oh ! refuse the boon ! 



An Exhortation. 



[ "5] 



NOVEMBER TENTH 

He was so awful, yet 
So beautiful in mystery and terror, 
Calming me as the loveliness of heaven 
Smooths the unquiet sea. 

Fragments. 

NOVEMBER ELEVENTH 

For deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes hoary, 
The world can hear not the sweet notes that move 
The sphere whose light is melody to lovers. 

The Triumph of Life. 

NOVEMBER TWELFTH 

I loved, I know not what — but this low sphere 
And all that it contains, contains not thee, 
Thou, whom seen nowhere, I feel everywhere, 
Dim object of my soul's idolatry. 

The Zucca. 

NOVEMBER THIRTEENTH 

For she was beautiful : her beauty made 
The bright world dim, . . . 

Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle 
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three 
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle 
The clouds and waves and mountains with, and 
she 

[116] 



As many star-beams, ere their lamps could 

dwindle 
In the belated moon, wound skilfully; 
And with these threads a subtle veil she wove — 
A shadow for the splendour of her love. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

NOVEMBER FOURTEENTH 

There is a People mighty in its youth, 
A land beyond the Oceans of the West, 

That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze 

Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume 

Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze 

Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapt in 

gloom. 

Revolt of Islam. 

NOVEMBER FIFTEENTH 

Though the sound overpowers, 
Sing again, with thy sweet voice revealing 
A tone 

Of some world far from ours, 

Where music and moonlight and feeling 

Are one. 

An Ariette for Music. 

NOVEMBER SIXTEENTH 

Spirit of Nature ! here ! 
In this interminable wilderness 
Of worlds, at whose immensity 

[ "7 1 



Even soaring fancy staggers, 

Here is thy fitting temple. 

Yet not the lightest leaf 

That quivers to the passing breeze 

Is less instinct with thee. 

Queen Mab. 

NOVEMBER SEVENTEENTH 

And he is gathered to the kings of thought 
Who waged contention with their time's decay, 
And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 

Adonais. 

NOVEMBER EIGHTEENTH 

And human hands first mimicked and then 

mocked, 
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own, 
The human form, till marble grew divine. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

NOVEMBER NINETEENTH 

If Greece must be 
A wreck, yet shall its fragments re-assemble, 
And build themselves again impregnably 

In a diviner clime, 
To Amphionic music, on some cape sublime, 
Which frowns above the idle foam of time. 

Hellas. 

I 118] 



NOVEMBER TWENTIETH 

Enough from incommunicable dream, 

And twilight phantasms and deep noonday 

thought 
Has shone within me, that serenely now, 
And moveless as a long-forgotten lyre, 
Suspended in the solitary dome 
Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 
I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain 
May modulate with murmurs of the air, 
And motions of the forests and the sea, 
And voice of living beings, and woven hymns 
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. 

Alastor. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 

Day upon the threshold of the east 

Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath 

Of darkness re-illumine even the least 

Of heaven's living eyes. 

The Triumph of Life. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 

The mountain shepherds came, 
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent; 
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 
Over his living head like Heaven is bent, 
An early but enduring monument, 

["9l 



Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song 
In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent 
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, 
And love taught grief to fall like music from his 
tongue. 

Adonais. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 

On her hearth lay blazing many a piece 
Of sandalwood, rare gums and cinnamon; 
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is, 
Each flame of it is as a precious stone 
Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this 
Belongs to each and all who gaze upon. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

This is the mystic shell*, 
See the pale azure fading into silver 
Lining it with a soft yet glowing light : 
Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there ? 

Prometheus Unbound. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

Hark ! whence that rushing sound ? 

'T is like a wondrous strain that sweeps 

Around a lonely ruin, 
When west winds sigh and evening waves respond 

In whispers from the shore : 
[ 120 ] 



'T is wilder than the unmeasured notes 
Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves 
The genii of the breezes sweep. 

The Demon of the World. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; 

He sets, and each ephemeral insect then 

Is gathered into death without a dawn, 

And the immortal stars awake again; 

So is it in the world of living men : 

A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight 

Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when 

It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its 

light 
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful 

night. 

Adonais. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

'T is the melodious hue of beauty thrown 
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain 
Which humanize and harmonize the strain. 

On the Medusa of L. da Vinci. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven 
By the enchantment of thy strain, 
And on my shoulders wings are woven, 

[ 121 ] 



To follow its sublime career, 
Beyond the mighty moons that wane 
Upon the verge of nature's utmost sphere, 
Till the world's shadowy walls are past and 
disappear. 

To Constantia, Singing. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 

When the lamp is shattered 

The light in the dust lies dead — 
When the cloud is scattered 

The rainbow's glory is shed. 
When the lute is broken, 

Sweet tones are remembered not; 
When the lips have spoken, 

Loved accents are soon forgot. 

Lines. 



NOVEMBER THIRTIETH 

Come, months, come away, 
From November to May, 
In your saddest array; 

Follow the bier 
Of the dead cold year, 
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. 

Autumn, 



[ 122 ] 



DECEMBER 



DECEMBER FIRST 

THE One remains, the many change and 
pass; 
Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows 

fly; 

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
Until Death tramples it to fragments. 



DECEMBER SECOND 

Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 

Spirit of Delight ! 
Wherefore hast thou left me now 

Many a day and night ? 
Many a weary night and day 
'T is since thou art fled away. 

DECEMBER THIRD 

Senseless is the breast, and cold, 
Which relenting love would fold; 
Bloodless are the veins and chill 
Which the pulse of pain did fill; 
[ 123 ] 



Adonais. 



Song. 



Every little living nerve 
That from bitter words did swerve 
Round the tortured lips and brow, 
Are like sapless leaflets now 
Frozen upon December's bough. 

Lines among the Euganean Hills. 

DECEMBER FOURTH 

Palace-roof of cloudless nights ! 

Paradise of golden lights ! 

Deep, immeasurable, vast, 

Which art now, and which wert then ! 

Of the present and the past, 

Of the eternal where and when, 

Presence-chamber, temple, home, 

Ever-canopying dome, 

Of acts and ages yet to come. 

Ode to Heaven. 

DECEMBER FIFTH 

The mountaineer, 
Encountering on some dizzy precipice 
That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of 

wind 
With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet 
Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused 
In his career. 

Alastor. 



DECEMBER SIXTH 

Sleep, sleep ! Our song is laden 

With the soul of slumber; 
It was sung by a Samian maiden 
Whose lover was of the number 
Who now keep 
That calm sleep 
Whence none may wake, where none shall weep. 

Hellas. 

DECEMBER SEVENTH 

For love, and beauty, and delight, 
There is no death nor change : their might 
Exceeds our organs, which endure 
No light, being themselves obscure. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

DECEMBER EIGHTH 

Away ! the moor is dark beneath the moon, 

Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of 
even: 

Away ! the gathering winds will call the dark- 
ness soon, 

And profoundest midnight shroud the serene 
lights of heaven. 

Stanzas. April, 1814. 



[ 125] 



DECEMBER NINTH 

Your breath is like soft music, your words are 
The echoes of a voice which on my heart 
Sleeps like a melody of early days. 



Fragments. 



DECEMBER TENTH 

I love snow, and all the forms 
Of the radiant frost: 

I love waves, and winds, and storms, 
Everything almost 

Which is Nature's. 



Song. 



DECEMBER ELEVENTH 

We know 
That we have power over ourselves to do 
And suffer — what, we know not till we try; 
But something nobler than to live and die. 

Julian and Maddalo. 

DECEMBER TWELFTH 

For Winter came: the wind was his whip: 

He had torn the cataracts from the hills 
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles; 

His breath was a chain which without a sound 
The earth, and the air, and the water bound; 
He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne, 
By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone. 

The Sensitive Plant. 

[ 126] 



DECEMBER THIRTEENTH 

Methinks 
This word of love is fit for all the world, 
And that for gentle hearts another name 
Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world 
owns. 

Fragments. 

DECEMBER FOURTEENTH 

Through the sunset of hope, 

Like the shapes of a dream, 
What paradise islands of glory gleam ! 

Beneath heaven's cope, 
Their shadows more clear float by — 
The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky, 
The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe, 
Burst like morning on dream, or like heaven on 

death. 

Hellas- 

DECEMBER FIFTEENTH 

As the wild air stirs and sways 
The tree-swung cradle of a child, 
So the breath of these rude days 
Rocks the year: — be calm and mild, 
Trembling hours, she will arise 
With new love within her eyes. 

Dirge for the Year. 

[ 127] 



DECEMBER SIXTEENTH 

Go thou to Rome, — at once the Paradise, 

The grave, the city, and the wilderness; 

And where its wrecks like shattered mountains 

rise, 

And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress 

The bones of Desolation's nakedness, 

Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, 

Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead 

A light of laughing flowers along the grass is 

spread. 

Adonais. 

DECEMBER SEVENTEENTH 

The woods were in their winter sleep, 

Rocked in that repose divine 

On the wind-swept Apennine; 

And dreaming some of Autumn past, 

And some of Spring approaching fast, 

And some of April buds and showers, 

And some of songs in July bowers, 

And all of love. 

Ariel to Miranda. 

DECEMBER EIGHTEENTH 

He stood beside me, 
The embodied vision of the brightest dream, 
Which like a dawn heralds the day of life. 

Fragments. 

[ 128] 



DECEMBER NINETEENTH 

The brinded lioness led forth her young, 

That she might teach them how they should 

forego 
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung 
His sinews at her feet, and sought to know 
With looks whose motions spoke without a 

tongue 
How he might be as gentle as the doe. 
The magic circle of her voice and eyes 
All savage natures did imparadise. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

DECEMBER TWENTIETH 

The secret things of the grave are there, 
Where all but this frame must surely be, 
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous 

ear 
No longer will live to hear or to see 
All that is great and all that is strange 
In the boundless realm of unending change. 

Death. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 

Peace ! the abyss is wreathed with scorn 
At your presumption, atom-born ! 
What is heaven ? and what are ye 
Who its brief expanse inherit ? 
What are suns and spheres which flee 

[ 129 1 



With the instinct of that spirit 

Of which ye are but a part ? 
Drops which Nature's mighty heart 
Drives through thinnest veins. Depart ! 

Ode to Heaven. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 

The flower that smiles to-day 

To-morrow dies; 
All that we wish to stay, 

Tempts and then flies; 

What is this world's delight ? 

Lightning that mocks the night, 

Brief even as bright. 

Mutability. 



DECEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions 

In music's most serene dominions; 

Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

Liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might 
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep, 
And change eternal death into a night 
Of glorious dreams — or if eyes needs must weep, 
Could make their tears all wonder and delight, 
She in her crystal vials did closely keep. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

[ 130 ] 



DECEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

I loved — alas ! our life is love; 

But when we cease to breathe and move 

I do suppose love ceases too. 

I thought, but not as now I do, 

Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore, 

Of all that men had thought before, 

And all that nature shows, and more. 

Song for Tasso. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

All interwoven with fine feathery snow 
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime, 
With which frost paints the pines in winter time. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

Winter robing with pure snow and crowns 
Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs. 

Alastor. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Oh, cease ! must hate and death return ? 

Cease ! must men kill and die ? 

Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn 

Of bitter prophecy. 

The world is weary of the past, 

Oh, might it die and rest at last ! 

Hellas. 

[ 131 ] 






DECEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever 
From creation to decay, 

Like the bubbles on a river, 

Sparkling, bursting, borne away. 

But they are still immortal 

Who, through birth's orient portal 
And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, 

Clothe their unceasing flight 

In the brief dust and light 
Gathered around their chariots as they go; 

New shapes they still may weave, 

New gods, new laws, receive; 
Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last 

On Death's bare ribs had cast. 

Hellas. 



DECEMBER THIRTIETH 

Orphan hours, the year is dead, 

Come and sigh, come and weep ! 
Merry hours, smile instead, 

For the year is but asleep. 
See, it smiles as it is sleeping, 
Mocking your untimely weeping. 

Dirge for the Tear. 



[ 132 ] 



DECEMBER THIRTY-FIRST 
Here, oh, here; 
We bear the bier 
Of the Father of many a cancelled year ! 
Spectres we 
Of the dead Hours be, 
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity. 

Strew, oh, strew 

Hair, not yew ! 
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew ! 

Be the faded flowers 
Of Death's bare bowers 
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours ! 

Haste, oh, haste ! 

As shades are chased, 
Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste. 
We melt away, 

Like dissolving spray, 
From the children of a diviner day, 

With the lullaby 

Of winds that die 
On the bosom of their own harmony ! 

Prometheus Unbound. 



[ l 33 ] 



/, 



3. 1 WIS 






{ 



COLfS 



